Save the Date:

10th to 14th July, 2018

Welcome to the homepage of the Association for Borderlands Studies World Conference 2018, the world's largest convention on borders and border-related issues. The second edition of this quadrennial event is organized by the University of Vienna and partners and is hosted in Vienna and Budapest from July 10th to 14th, 2018. The organizing theme is Border-Making and its Consequences: Interpreting Evidence from the "post-Colonial" and "post-Imperial" 20th Century. We expect more than 400 participants from around the world, including renowned scholars as well as students, spanning all fields of the humanities and social sciences. Please take your time to discover the many intriguing aspects of this conference, from the multitude of panels and the keynote speeches to the special programs within the frame of the convention.

We are looking forward to your application and to welcoming you to Vienna and Budapest in 2018!

In turning the 2018 ABS World Conference into a platform for an experiment, the Top Citizen Science project 'Talking Borders' brings us to the applied capacity of border research: 'Border research takes on an applied dimension, as we seek to discover, and promote, those mechanisms which enable borders to be opened, reducing the frictions and tensions of socially constructed difference. This is the desire to 'overcome' borders as places where people can meet, to overcome the social construction of spatial fixation.' (David Newman (2003) On borders and power: A theoretical framework, Journalof Borderlands Studies, 18:1, 13-25)